


Here We Are, No One Else

by Owlship



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Gen, Kid Fic, entirely gen for once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 07:36:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12427992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: Max is eight when some new people move in down the street.





	Here We Are, No One Else

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to J, who moved away, and to K, who stayed.
> 
> Title from "[We Are Going To Be Friends](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTu5ltfX2dw)" by The White Stripes.

Max is eight when some new people move in down the street. He likes saying 'down the street' better than the reality, which is 'two lefts and three roads away', because the streets here are so wide and lonely that it feels exactly as if they're next door.

He rides his bike over and watches from a good distance as the house fills up with people, like ants scurrying to the center of their anthill. They don't have a moving truck but just a few cars stuffed with stuff, and a ute that's got of all things _plants_ crammed onto its flat bed, green leaves trailing out into the dusty air.

"Hi," a voice says, and he nearly falls off his bike in surprise that someone snuck up on him. He turns to look and sees a girl about his age, with long brownish hair that looks badly tangled and a gap where she's missing a tooth. "I'm Furiosa. Can I ride your bike?"

Max blinks at her and tightens his hands on the handlebars. "Are you new?" he asks, looking from her down to the people milling around the house.

"Yeah," she says with a nod. "Just moved. What's your name?" The question is belated, like she only just remembered she's supposed to ask.

"Max," he replies. He doesn't want to let her ride his bike when he doesn't know anything about her, like whether she'll take off with it and never come back. It's the first new bike he's had, a present from his birthday, and he's protective of it.

"I could ride on the handlebars," Furiosa says after a moment. "You pedal and I hang on?"

He considers this; worst case they both fall, he figures. "Okay," he agrees with a nod.

She grins, and he holds the bike steady while she clambers up onto the handlebars. He's never ridden a bike like this and the balance is all weird now, a heavy weight where there shouldn't be one.

"Ready," she says, and swings her legs so they clear the ground. The bike tips precariously and Max giggles from nerves, but starts pushing off.

They wipe out before he's gone ten paces, the bike wobbling and lurching off to the side to spill them out onto the dusty road. Furiosa shrieks with laughter and hops up immediately while he sets the bike back upright.

"You almost had it!" she tells him, pushing her hair away from her face. There's a blade of grass stuck in it that he doesn't think she's noticed. "Try again."

He wants to be annoyed that she's telling him what to do, but he doesn't really mind. He thinks this is turning them into friends but he isn't really sure; he doesn't have many friends, not ones who would spend time with him when they aren't at school, anyway.

She climbs back on and this time he's ready for the way her weight wants to pull the bike off balance, and when he starts pedaling he's able to get all the way to the end of the road before he tries turning, and the bike unbalances again. She jumps off before the bike crashes this time and when she smiles at him he smiles back, pleased with this new trick he's learned.

"Come on," she coaxes, "How fast can you go?"

Pretty fast, as it turns out. When his legs get tired of pedaling Max takes a turn sitting on the handlebars himself, and finds that it's harder to balance from there than he'd thought.

"If you put pegs on the back wheel someone could stand there," Furiosa says when they're sitting on the side of the road panting, the bike discarded where it fell last. "It's easier."

"Hmm," he hums, unsure how to go about it but liking the idea. "I should get home," he says reluctantly.

"Yeah, me too," she says. "Tomorrow?"

Tomorrow his Dad is home from work which means he won't be out playing, and he shakes his head. "Can't. Day after?"

"Deal," she says, and sticks out her hand to shake like they're grownups. He takes it and she squeezes his fingers painfully tight, so he retaliates in turn until they're both wincing in pain. Finally she yanks her hand away with a muttered, "Ow, okay, geeze."

"A firm handshake is essential," Max says, unsure where he's heard it but knowing that it's true.

She nods solemnly as if he's imparted some important wisdom, and then heaves herself back up to her feet. "See yah," she says, barely waiting for him to wave goodbye before she's trotting back down the road for the house that used to stand empty.

   
  


"You're awfully dirty today," his Grandma says when she sees him, and Max shrugs.

"I fell off my bike," he says. Dinner's just about ready because the house smells delicious and it wasn't like he got hurt, or anything.

"You'll wear the tires out on that thing with how much you ride it," she chides, but there's a smile on her face despite her tone.

"I made a friend," Max says. "Her name's Furiosa." He didn't tell her but he thinks it's an excellent name, like something she made up for herself because of how cool it sounds. Maybe he should change his name- but he already introduced himself to her, so she'd know he made it up.

"That's nice," his Grandma says. "Go on and clean up, now. Your father will be home any minute."

  
  


He meets Furiosa on the same road the day after next, but taking turns riding around the bike gets boring after a while, especially when the sun starts really beating down on them.

"There's a place we can catch frogs and stuff," Max offers.

"Okay," she says readily, and he leads them to the little drainage stream another street over. He's heard that the water is dirty but it's _water_ , how can it be dirty? The critters that live in it seem happy enough, anyway.

"Oh, gross," Furiosa says happily as she overturns a rock to find a big fat slug clinging to the underside.

"Gross," he agrees. He thought girls were supposed to not like gross stuff, but she doesn't seem to mind at all. She even pokes at the dead fish they find in the shallows, speculating on the cause of death and whether they should have a funeral.

"It's dead, it deserves to be buried," Max says. It's been dead a while probably, the flesh all rotting and bones peeking through.

"It's an animal," she argues, "it's nature. Leave it."

When they disturb the body little tadpoles or minnows scurry away, only to come back when the water settles again. If they bury the fish the minnows won't have anything to eat. "We don't have shovels, anyway," he says.

She sees the giving-in for what it is and smiles smugly. He sticks out his tongue at her and she laughs, and the noise is happy rather than mean and teasing so he joins in after a moment, until neither of them has any air left.

  
  


Hanging out with Furiosa becomes a near-daily event. He's happy to show off the places he knows, all the things that he's seen since he was little but are brand new to her. They find good solid sticks to bring with them when they go rambling, to fight off snakes and dingoes and highwaymen or whatever else they might encounter.

"My Ma says they're more scared of us than we are of them," she says.

"I'm not scared of animals," Max says. "Maybe we'll find dingo pups. We could raise them."

"Yeah!" she says, eyes lighting up in excitement. "We should go looking, I'm sure there are some around here."

"Some got to Ms. Jones' cat last autumn," he says. "It was awful." Bad enough about the cat, but then a bunch of men from the neighborhood had gone out with guns. He hadn't liked to hear talk about it.

"So there's bound to be a few around," she says. "Summer's kinda late for puppies, though."

"We can wait 'till next year," he says.

Furiosa focuses her attention on her fighting stick. "Yeah, I guess," she says. "Come on, daylight's burning!"

He follows the path she beats into the tall grasses for a while before making his own, the two of them calling back and forth about whether they've found anything yet or not.

"I found some poop!" she yells, and he wrinkles his nose even though there's no one to see.

"Keep it!" he shouts back, and listens to her laughter floating up over the grass.

"You'll never be a tracker," Furiosa says, tone teasing.

He doesn't say that he doesn't think there's anything to be tracked, not over here anyway.

  
  


Their only big fight is over sandwiches. Max likes peanut butter and jam, while Furiosa staunchly advocates for peanut butter and honey.

"It's better for you," she says, waving her bread under his nose. He used to go back to his house when he was hungry midday, but with Furiosa he's found that it's better to pack something to eat and take it with him. "There's all sorts of preservatives in jam." She sounds the word out carefully, like it's one she's read but not heard being said very often.

"I like how it tastes," he replies. Today's jam is apricot, which he doesn't like as much, but if he eats all the raspberry jam his Grandma will get upset with him.

"That's a dumb reason," she says.

"Hey," he objects, and tugs his own sandwich a little closer to himself. Who cares whether it's 'good' for you if he doesn't like the way it tastes?

"You're gonna be full of chemicals," Furiosa says, taking a big bite of her sandwich. Around her mouthful she says, "G'nna get cancers."

He's a little grossed out that he can see her half-chewed food when she speaks, but he solves that problem by looking away from her. "I don't care," he says firmly.

She scoffs, and he feels himself getting angry.

"No one's making you eat it," he says.

"You couldn't if you wanted to," Furiosa declares. "I have principles."

Max scowls and puts the rest of his sandwich down, not hungry any more. "I'm going home," he says, standing up abruptly.

"Why?" she says. "Because you realized jam is dumb? Don't be a baby."

"Shut up!" he snaps, and reaches out to shove her shoulder. She looks genuinely surprised by the action but she's retaliating a moment later, shoving the last of her sandwich into her mouth and launching herself at him with a stifled growl. Max tries to dodge but he trips over a rock and they go down in a heap, flailing at each other wildly.

It's the first real fight he's ever had, Trevor-the-bully pushing him around at school notwithstanding, and he can't tell if one of them is winning because they're really just rolling around, jumping up and running away only to be tackled back down again, like a really rough game of tag. They fall down a hill and spin over and over, and he hears Furiosa give a shrieking laugh next to him. The noise makes him smile despite himself, head spinning from the trip, and when he sits up she's grinning at him.

"Let's go again!" she says, already staggering up to her feet and heading for the top of the hill.

Max wants to call her back, to finish the fight they'd started, but he gives it a moment's thought and decides that he'd much rather they be friends again. He gets up and follows her, and they completely ruin their clothes rolling down the dusty hill again, and again, until it's late enough that they have to go home again.

  
  


"They're playing Superman tonight," Max says. "You could come over and watch it." He can't figure out if she does have a TV or not, if maybe she did in the past and doesn't now, but he knows the movie is one she'll want to watch.

"Maybe," she says, and scuffs her foot along the ground. "Where do you live?"

"Down the block," he says, and points off towards the general direction of his house. There's a lot of nothing out here but you still can't see it uninterrupted. "It's red."

"I'll have to ask my moms," she says. "They don't like me out after dark."

He has to suppress an unexpected bolt of jealousy at hearing her use the plural. He doesn't have a mom, not anymore, and she apparently has more than one. Life's not fair like that.

"Okay," he says out loud. "It's on pretty late. Maybe... maybe you could stay over?" The thought hadn't occurred to him until the words are leaving his mouth, but as soon as it does he can tell that the idea is a good one. They won't have to say goodbye and leave for dinner at their own houses, they can stay the entire day! And maybe build a blanket fort in the living room, or sneak out to the back porch's roof to look at the stars, and his Grandma will for sure make pancakes for breakfast if there's a guest.

Her eyes are a little wide, surprised. "I've never stayed over with anyone before," she says.

"You don't have to," he says quickly. He doesn't even know if his Dad will say she _can_. "I have to ask my Dad first."

"I'll ask, and you'll ask, and we'll meet back here?" Furiosa says.

He nods, and she darts off towards where her own house lies. Max takes his time getting to his own house, unsure of what his Dad will say. He's never invited a friend over before.

"Dad?" he calls out as he approaches the garage, wheeling his bike alongside himself.

His Dad grunts, and there's the sound of metal clanging against metal. "Yeah."

"Dad," he says again, and stands near to where his Dad is lying under a car, only his shiny boots sticking out. "Can I have a friend over? We wanna watch Superman, and Grandma already said I could stay up to watch it, but she's never seen it so I said maybe she could come over. And then maybe she could stay over?"

His Dad slides out from underneath the car, smudges of grease all over him. "Who?"

"Furiosa. My friend."

His Dad hums, and wipes his dirty hands on his dirty shirt. Some days Max likes nothing better than to help out however he can, but his Dad doesn't often let him 'get underfoot' and besides, lately he's had Furiosa to spend time with. "Grandma's letting you stay up, huh?"

Max nods, holding his breath.

His Dad shrugs one shoulder casually. "Sure."

Max smiles and feels like jumping in place, though he restrains himself. "Thank you!"

"Where'd you find a girl around here, anyway?" his Dad asks.

"Her family moved in down the street," he says. "That big house next to the farm. There's so many of them but I'm only friends with her."

His Dad nods. "I heard about them. Buncha-" He cuts off whatever he was going to say, and instead sends Max the type of look that makes him want to shrink away about as much as to puff out his chest bravely. "Well, I suppose it's alright."

Max waits to see if his Dad will say anything else, but he only grabs for one of the tools sprawled out on the ground next to him and moves the creeper back under the car. So Max darts inside to let his Grandma know that they're going to have a guest, and ask if she can make pancakes in the morning. Then he's back out the door and on his bike, racing back to where he and Furiosa usually meet up.

She has a shorter walk than he does but she's not there, and he waits for what feels like forever but is probably less than half an hour for her to trudge up the road towards him. There's a backpack on her shoulders and her hair is soaking wet but for once not full of tangles.

"They said it was okay," she says for a greeting.

Max wants to ask what happened- her clothes are different now too- but doesn't. "Dad said you can stay over, and Grandma's gonna make us pancakes in the morning," he says instead.

"Do you put jam on those, too?" she asks, but her voice is teasing.

"You don't have to eat them," he tells her with a dramatic fake sniff like he's offended, and she cracks into a giggle.

"Come on," she says, "I've never seen your house before!"

They bike over, him pedaling and her balanced on the handlebars, a practiced maneuver by this point. He parks the bike and feels suddenly shy, aware of the ways his house looks different than from others he's seen on the telly. What should he show her? The garage is off-limits while his Dad is working in it, and the yard is mostly the same scrub as everywhere else, but he doesn't know what might be interesting inside the house either.

Furiosa marches right up to the front door and then turns to look back at him, clearly waiting for him to let her inside.

He opens the door and leads the way inside. "Living room," he says, gesturing out to the room at large. The couch is comfy, even if the carpet smells funky when you get too close to it, and it's where they'll be watching the movie tonight.

She looks around with interest and he feels himself taking notice as if for the first time of the little decorations his Grandma has up around the room, the pictures and knick-knacks and the embroidered pillows on the couch. Are they normal things to have in your house? They're certainly not _cool_ , or anything, not what he'd want in his own room.

"That's the kitchen," Max says when she looks towards the doorway, planning to just shepherd Furiosa up to his room to play with his action figures before the movie starts, but his Grandma must hear them because she emerges from the kitchen with a smile.

"Hello there," she says, "You must be Furiosa."

"Yes, Ma'am," Furiosa says in the single most polite utterance he has ever heard from her. "It's nice to meet you."

His Grandma smiles more. "Dinner's in a hour," she says, "I hope you like macaroni and cheese."

"Thank you," Furiosa says, still strangely subdued.

Max waits a moment to see if she'll keep being weird before tapping her shoulder to get her attention. "Come on," he says, "I've got toys in my room. Batman and Superman and a few others"

She follows on his heels as he walks up the stairs, but looks perfectly at ease again when he looks over his shoulder. "This is all yours?" she asks when he opens the door.

He shrugs because well, yeah. He doesn't have any siblings and their house may be small, but there's enough rooms for him to not need to share with his Dad.

"I've never had my own room," Furiosa says wistfully as she steps fully inside. She slides her backpack off her shoulder onto the floor carelessly.

"Why not?" he asks.

"Never enough space," she says with a shrug. "But whatever. Do you have Wonder Woman?"

"Yeah," he says, and feels embarrassed that he hadn't thought to clean up his room even a little before inviting her over. He shoves his dirty laundry into a pile quickly while he gathers up his toys, and when he's gotten Wonder Woman rescued from where she got wedged between his hamper and bookshelf he shoves the doll at Furiosa. "Here."

"She's cool, isn't she?" Furiosa says, taking her eagerly.

"I guess," Max replies, deciding he'd rather play with Superman since that's the movie that's on. He likes Wonder Woman well enough, but it doesn't surprise him that Furiosa likes her more, since they're both girls and all.

They play up in his room for what feels like no time at all before his Grandma is calling them down for dinner, and Max watches as Furiosa retreats back to that slightly quiet version of herself that says "please" and "thank you" when she speaks. It's kind of weird to see, but not weird enough for him to ask her outright if she's got alien bugs in her brain or anything.

His Dad asks some questions about her and her family, responding himself with little hums and vague words that don't seem interested at all. Why bother asking, Max wants to know, if you don't care about the answers?

When dinner is cleared away Furiosa offers to help with the washing up, face grimacing to betray the fact that she doesn't actually want to, but his Grandma waves her away. "Go back to playing," she says with a smile.

"The movie'll be on soon," Max says when they awkwardly retreat from the kitchen. He turns to his Dad, seated in his favorite chair. "Dad, can we make a blanket fort?"

His Dad contemplates this for a moment, fingers tapping idly against the glass bottle he's holding, before he nods. "Don't make too much of a mess," he cautions.

"We'll clean it up!" Max easily promises, mind already whirling with ideas for how to build a fort awesome enough to impress Furiosa, who doesn't seem impressed by very much. They shove the couch so it's angled along the other wall and fetch sheets from the closet, stringing them up with some twine his Grandma produces, and laying blankets on the floor to cushion against the musty old carpet smell. His Dad even lets them turn off the overhead light and use just the desk lamp in the corner, making the room glow with warm yellow light.

"This is great," Furiosa says as she snuggles down next to him, hair irritably pushed away from her face. He wonders why she keeps it long, since it seems to bother her so much and some other girls have short hair.

"Mhm," he agrees, feeling safe and cozy inside the fort. Above them the ceiling is brightly-patterned spaceships, illuminated by the lamp and the blue glow of the telly. It's too small for adults to get inside, not without damaging the network of twine and broomsticks they have propping it up, but it's not so small that it feels cramped with her. It's the best fort he's ever built, he knows, because Furiosa had introduced some ideas that made his own better, and he'd fixed some problems she'd said she was worried about.

"Your show's on," his Dad says, and Max snaps his attention back to the television.

"Do you think it's going to be _just_ Superman?" Furiosa asks in an undertone as the opening begins.

Max shrugs. "It's named after him," he says. "Maybe."

She hums under her breath and he wonders if she'll be disappointed, but she doesn't seem upset to him.

The movie takes up all his attention, except when the commercials cut in and he turns to Furiosa to talk about what had just happened, what's still to come. She likes the movie as much as he does, he's glad to see, and they're equally enthralled when the finale comes around.

"That was wicked," Furiosa says happily, rolling away from the credits as they stream across the screen.

"Yeah," he agrees with a vigorous nod of his head. "We should get the toys again."

Her eyes light up and they scramble out of the fort. His Dad is gone from his chair and his Grandma meets them in the hallway, a smile on her face.

"Your Dad's gone to bed," she tells him, "So you'll have to be quiet. But he's said you can sleep in the fort if you'd like."

"We _can_ ?" Max says, disbelieving. It was one thing to be allowed to build it, another entirely to get to _stay_ in it.

His Grandma nods. "Just don't cause a ruckus. Furiosa, dear, did you bring something to sleep in?" His Grandma is dressed in her flannel house-robe, he realizes, which means it's at least his ordinary bed-time.

"In my bag," Furiosa replies with a nod.

"We can stay up some more, can't we?" Max asks, sad to think that they're getting put to bed- even if 'bed' this time means a spectacular blanket fort.

"For a while," his Grandma says with a little smile. "Furiosa, there's a bathroom you can change in over here."

Max races up the stairs and throws on a set of his own pajamas, only stopping to grab Superman and Wonder Woman before he heads back down. Furiosa's pajamas are big on her and are pink with _flowers_ across the front, which is funny enough that he can't hold in a laugh at the sight.

"Shut up," she says, crossing her arms in front of herself defensively. "They were my cousin's."

"Sure," Max says, pretending not to believe her. The idea of her wanting to wear something so girly when she happily spends her days splashing around in mud with him is funny, though he's not entirely sure why. She _is_ a girl, after all, and aren't girls supposed to like flowers and stuff?

They retreat back under the blanket fort, this time with the lamp out so it's only lit by the moon and light left on in the kitchen, and play as quietly as they can manage for a while, sending Superman and Wonder Woman out on fantastical adventures. Eventually exhaustion takes hold and they fall asleep, snug and secure inside the little world they've built for themselves.

  
  


He says goodbye to her reluctantly the next day after a breakfast of pancakes and too much syrup, and even more reluctantly dismantles the blanket fort once she's gone.

  
  


Two weeks after their sleepover, Max's Grandma takes him into town to buy supplies for the upcoming school year. He doesn't get much- doesn't _need_ much- but he's eager to show Furiosa the notebook he found, with all the Justice League on the cover.

"Cool," she says when she looks it over, sounding more bored than impressed.

"It's for school," Max explains. A thought occurs to him. "Will you be in my class? What grade are you?"

Furiosa looks away from him for a moment, like she's thinking. "I'm homeschooled," she says after a pause.

"Oh," he replies. He's never met someone who's homeschooled before.

She nods, and hands him back the notebook. "I've never gone to a real school," she says.

"It's okay," Max says, "School's dumb. Do you get homework?"

"Nah," she says, and shakes her head. "Come on, let's go to the creek!"

He puts his notebook back away where it'll be safe, and eagerly jumps on his bike to pedal them down to the drainage stream, to see what critters they can find.

  
  


He forgets about Furiosa being homeschooled until a few days before school starting, when she rocks on her toes and grins at him. "I'm gonna go to school with you!" she says, and Max is struck dumb for a moment with happiness. "My moms said I could go if I wanted."

"That's great!" he tells her, the possibilities running through his head. They can walk to and from together, and do projects together, and he'll finally have a friend who stays his friend even after the bell's rung. Except... she's a girl, and it's one thing to be friends now when it's the two of them but it might be another when he's back with the other boys. He's never really believed in cooties or anything, but will _she_ want to hang out with the girls instead?

"Is there a bus?" Furiosa says.

He shakes his head. "We'll walk," he says. "Or ride my bike!" He hadn't had his bike last year, but he knows there's a bike rack he can lock it to at the school.

She smiles at him, and they spend the rest of the day making plans for what their first day will be like, and the rest of the year beyond that.

  
  


The first day of school dawns and Furiosa meets him in the road, hair once more damp and tangle-free, like it was the day they had their sleepover. He smiles at her and she smiles back, more shy than he's used to from her, and he lets her pedal the bike most of the way over.

It becomes clear pretty soon that Furiosa doesn't quite fit in, from her name to the way she refers to having two moms and no dad, to her reaction to Trevor-the-bully's attempts at scaring her off the sports field during recess. Instead of backing down like the other girls and most of the boys would, Furiosa gets right back in his face and pushes him, until the teacher has to separate the two.

"You shouldn't fight," Max tells her, sneaking a few moments in the hallway where she's been made to sit. "You'll have to sit out here all the time."

"I don't care," she replies with a shake of her head, looking entirely unrepentant. "He deserved it."

He sighs, but can't argue that Trevor hadn't deserved to be knocked down a peg or two. Still, he'd rather Furiosa be in class with him like they'd planned, rather than sitting out here by herself. "It was pretty great," he says. Trevor had fallen hard into the dusty ground, shock splashed all over his face. No one ever stood up to him, let alone a _girl_.

Furiosa smiles at him, smugly satisfied, and Max returns to the classroom before the teacher can wonder what's taking him so long.

  
  


Watching Furiosa defend herself, and some of the other kids, from Trevor becomes a daily staple. It's not just during recess but during class as well, and it doesn't earn her any friends- she's too abrasive for most, and still new and weird- but Max sees the respect she garners, and thinks it might not be so hard to do his part in standing up to the bully.

They work on homework together after class, Furiosa complaining that the system is barbaric and antiquated (a word she sounds out carefully, and then has to explain the meaning of before he nods eagerly in agreement). But their joint assignments get good marks, and Max helps her with the things she doesn't know and she helps him with what he doesn't know, and together they find that cursive writing is good enough for coded messages.

It's the best school year he can imagine having, even if he gets teased sometimes for having a girl be his friend. What does he care? Furiosa is cool, and likes him better than anyone else in the school, even the other girls who offered to play with her at recess the first day, and it's not like the boys would have been his friend anyway if she wasn't there.

  
  


It's an ordinary day when Furiosa doesn't meet him to walk to school together. Max waits for a while, but he'll be late if he stays too long, and eventually he bikes to school by himself. Maybe she's slept in, he thinks to himself, or she's sick, or she waited at the wrong street and thought _he_ wasn't there and they'll meet at the entrance and laugh.

She doesn't meet him at the entrance, and his theories expand to include alien abduction, or maybe ghost possession.

"I'll bring Furiosa's homework home," Max tells the teacher, who smiles benignly and hands him a slightly blurry photocopy of the exercises they worked on in class. He stuffs it into his notebook alongside his own homework and bikes not to his own house, but Furiosa's.

He's only been inside once, and rarely even came to the front door- usually it was Furiosa who searched him out, eager to get away from all the other people she lives with. He parks his bike and knocks on the door.

A few seconds pass with no answer, and he knocks again. This time the door opens to reveal an older woman, tired-looking with her gray hair a cloud around her head. "Yeah?" she says, sounding bored.

"I have Furiosa's homework," Max says, "She wasn't in class today, is she sick? Can I see her?"

"Oh," the woman says. "She's gone. The whole lot cleared out this weekend. She didn't tell you?"

Max stares at the woman in surprise, her words not making any sense. "No, she's just out sick today," he says. "I have her homework."

The woman sighs, and rubs her head for a moment. "Kid, Furiosa and the rest moved out. They're off to their farm in the bush, out west."

"But," Max says. "But. She can't be gone. She didn't say goodbye." She'd said goodbye when they went back to their houses for the night, true, but that was just a normal goodbye, a 'I'll see you in a day or two' goodbye.

"Sorry," the woman says with a shrug.

Max considers the situation for a moment, the driveway empty of cars, the silence from the house that was so noisy all the times he was near enough to it to hear. The woman must be lying, he decides, or have the wrong information. Maybe it really was aliens and Max is the only one to remember Furiosa's presence, and she's counting on him to save her! "Can you tell her I came by?"

"They didn't exactly leave a forwarding address," the woman says.

"I have her homework," Max says, because she's always done her homework on time, it's important to her.

"Kid," the woman says, and then stops with a heavy sigh. "They're gone, and they're not coming back. Run on home, now."

Before he can come up with something to say to that she starts closing the door, until he's left standing alone on the porch, clutching the photocopied homework sheet in his hand. He thinks about knocking again, but the driveway is just as empty as it was a moment ago, the house just as quiet. They've gone into town, he thinks to himself, they've found a carnival and taken Furiosa along for the day.

He stands on the porch for a minute or two, mulling over his options. He knocks again.

The woman opens the door and looks at him expectantly.

"Can I leave her homework here for her?" Max asks.

"She won't be back to get it," the woman says. She's lit a cigarette while he was thinking and she takes a puff of it, the air filling with the acrid scent.

"She might be," he says.

"She won't," the woman says with a tone of finality. She waits for a moment, then shuts the door on him again.

Max huffs to himself and thinks about knocking again, but decides he doesn't think the woman will change her story. He looks around and spies a mailbox, and thinks he'll leave Furiosa's homework there for her to find. He gets a pencil out of his backpack and scribbles her name on the back, so she knows it's for her, and then adds ' _see you soon. Max_ ' before shoving the photocopy into the mailbox.

  
  


The next day she still isn't at school, and he requests the homework from the teacher again. When he gets to Furiosa's house the old woman answers the door again, cigarette in hand, and tells him again that Furiosa and the others have gone away.

"That's not true," Max says, even though it's a bad idea to contradict adults.

"Sorry, kid, that's the way it is," she says with little sympathy in her voice, and shuts the door.

He scribbles another note on the back of Furiosa's homework and stuffs it into the mailbox. This time he said he'd be waiting for her to meet him at their usual spot, and he won't go to school if she doesn't show up.

In the morning there's no sign of her, and Max is over an hour late to school because he'd waited at the side of the road until his Grandma had come to collect him, angry because the principal had called her.

"Did your bike get a flat? You could have walked," she asks as she walks him towards the school, shepherding him like he might get lost or dart away.

"I was waiting for Furiosa," Max says morosely.

"Maybe she's sick," his Grandma says. "You should know better than to let yourself be late."

"The woman at her house said she's moved away," he says.

"Oh," his Grandma says, "Then why were you waiting?"

She doesn't get it, Max realizes. He knows that Furiosa hasn't moved away just like that, but he can't find the words to explain himself and so he shrugs for an answer and keeps walking.

  
  


On Friday he asks for the weekend's homework for Furiosa and the teacher says, "Max, I can't keep giving you extras. Photocopies cost money, you know, and Furiosa's been disenrolled."

"No," Max says with a stubborn shake of his head, "She's coming back."

But his teacher won't give him any more copies, so when he gets to Furiosa's house he sits down on the porch and writes a letter explaining why he doesn't have her homework for today, he hopes it won't be a problem. Then he figures that _he_ wouldn't do his homework if he had an excuse not to, and thinks she won't be too mad that he couldn't get copies for her.

  
  


He writes a few more letters, and funny things that happened in class, and invitations to play and watch telly and sleep over, and every day he crams them into the mailbox where he's put her homework. He tells her that he's tried peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches and they weren't bad, and he offers to give her his Wonder Woman doll, and he writes riddles that should make her want to track him down to know the answer.

He does all that and he doesn't get any responses, not a single one. One day he's adding another letter, this one with a pretty feather he found on the ground inside it, and realizes that the mailbox is stuffed full of all his letters, every single one since the first homework assignment that she missed. The paper is wrinkled and musty from being outside and he pulls the bundle out, hands shaking as the truth finally hits him.

She's gone. She's gone and she didn't say goodbye, and she didn't say she would be back.

Paper crumples under Max's hands as he clenches his fingers, but he can't see it clearly because suddenly his vision has gone blurry. He angrily stuffs the papers into his backpack and jumps on his bike, pedaling as fast as he can for his own house.

She _left_.

It's the only thing repeating in his head over and over, a chant that he can't stop. She's gone and she didn't even tell him she was going.

Max leave his bike in a heap by the driveway and storms through the house, gathering up all the traces of Furiosa he can find. The schoolwork they collaborated on, the drawings they made, the shirt she left behind by mistake once. He takes it all out into the yard and dumps it into a big pile, homework and letters and drawings and even the Wonder Woman doll because it was her favorite. Then he gets the lighter fluid from the garage and the lighter from the kitchen and he sets it all on fire.

Just as the flames are burning bright and hot he catches sight of the one photograph of Furiosa he has, and regret seizes him. Max reaches into the fire to snatch it out before it's burnt up, but he's too late- all he does is burn his hand, body recoiling before the feeling even reaches him.

He falls backwards onto the dusty grass with a howl of pain and clutches at his burnt hand, watching as the fire consumes everything. He didn't mean it! He didn't mean to get rid of _everything_! But there's no way to make the fire go away now, not when he can see that everything is nearly ash already.

Max stares at the flames with teary eyes and then starts crying for real, big heaving sobs that shake his entire body. She was his first friend, his only friend, and she didn't even tell him she was leaving.

His Grandma finds him there hours later, sitting in front of a burned circle on the lawn, soot and tears streaked all across his face. She cleans him up and soothes things over with his Dad when he gets home, and Max stands around mutely the entire time, just focusing on the pain in his burned hand.

  
  


His hand heals, though the physical pain leaving doesn't take away the sting of Furiosa's abandonment.

Max sometimes goes to her house just to check, but she's never there, and eventually another family moves in, this one much smaller and more normal. They have a son about the same age as him named Jim, and he joins the school midway through the year. It takes a few weeks of riding his bike quickly past him before Max stops and offers to walk with him, and it's less time than that before Jim is taking turns riding on his handlebars, just like Furiosa used to.

Eventually he realizes that Jim is as much his friend as Furiosa was, except that Jim promises he won't move away without telling first.

  
  


Much later, Max will wonder whether he ever really did know a girl called Furiosa. If he didn't just make up a pretend best friend for himself during a lonely summer, only for the fantasy to be broken by his real best mate arriving in his life. He doesn't have any proof of her existence, after all, no pictures or childish scribblings, no scars from the dozens of falls he took or the flames that licked at his hand.

The question fades away in time until it's something he just doesn't think about, like how he doesn't think about the bike he had that summer, or why peanut-butter-and-honey is something he seeks out when he needs comfort food.

  
  


Much, _much_ later he'll discover that Furiosa was real after all, and even better- that they can still be friends, even if it's been years since they saw each other last.


End file.
